


Papyrus

by ExpatGirl



Series: Episode Codas: Hieroglyphs [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s11e10 The Devil in the Details, Gen, POV Castiel, Possession, Post-Episode: s11e10 The Devil in the Details, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’d made deals in desperation, and he’d made deals in cold blood. He knew which one this was.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Papyrus

**Author's Note:**

> This can either follow "Udjat" or be read between "Adze-on-Block" and "Udjat".

He’d made deals in desperation, and he’d made deals in cold blood. He knew which one this was. His own expendability wasn’t in question. It hadn’t been for some time. How he _felt_ about it didn’t matter. That wasn’t the question, either. Expendability was his only known quantity. The question was: what could he do to turn it into an asset?

 _You’re nothing_ , he thought _, therefore all options are open to you. You_ _ **have**_ _nothing. Now fashion your weapon from it._

And then it hit him. Literally, in this case, with blows that could reduce cities to ash.

 _Lucifer was a_ _weapon_ , a greater weapon than Castiel had ever been, and he was still intact, still maintained the brutal purity of his forging. Even if the material itself had blackened, its strength remained. Here was a sword trying to force itself into their hands. All he had to do was reach out and _take it_.

 _But the boys._ He’d be putting a serpent in their midst.

His resolve wavered.

No. They’d know. They’d figure it out sooner rather than later. And one way or another, they’d overcome Lucifer again, because that’s just what they did.

 _They’ll see it as a betrayal_ , he thought. Maybe it was a betrayal?

Yes. Probably. He had a habit of doing that unintentionally.

 _But that could be an asset, too_ , he decided, as he framed his final question. They wouldn’t have to feel guilt or remorse about what they had to do.

And if it was Lucifer that ended him, then...then there’d be no guilt for them at all.

It would all be very clean.

Well, maybe there was _one_ emotion in play. He would take Amara’s words and shove them back down her throat.

 _Ex nihlio, nihil interit_. Spite filled his heart the way blood filled his mouth.

“Can you really beat her?”

****

In the moment between the word and the deed, Castiel took stock of the expanse of his life.

Legions of half-damned souls had roared within him, a multitude contained in one; a host in a single host, devouring and devoured, and the power had made him mad.

_Well. Madder._

He’d made himself God. No. Not God. He who is like God. Oh, but there was irony in that, demanding that Dean—Dean of _all_ people—bow down to him in that guise.

They’d ripped him up and started again.

(He’d only wanted to save the world. Keep it saved. The running of it hadn’t really crossed his mind. Administration had never been part of his job description. But then, neither had Free Will.)

_I was so damn stupid. But I was stupid for..._

No.

He had been forcibly stripped of—of everything. Little by little and then all at once. _Human-in-all-but-name, was there a phrase for that?_ He decided he should invent one.

He never managed to make good on his promise. He really had meant it, too.

And Dean had said “okay” and Castiel had thought that meant “okay, you will". But small words sometimes held many meanings and he had realized much, much too late in the game that sometimes “okay” only meant “okay, if you say so” and that meant “no”.

 _Fixing the things that you broke isn’t the same thing as making them whole_ , he reminded himself. Just because you’d been forgiven didn’t mean you’d been absolved. Redemption just wasn’t on the cards.

Well. Perhaps there had been another emotion in play, too.

****

Lucifer delivered his usual greeting. The parts of Castiel that could still bleed, did.

****

Being possessed by Lucifer was different than being possessed by the Leviathan. They were creatures made entirely of appetites, who delighted in their own malicious hungers and pulled him down, down. Like being chained to a rock in the sea.

Lucifer was mostly—forward and _up_ , like being dragged back to Heaven by the wings (which was, of course, how they dragged you), but never actually arriving. He had appetites, too, yes, but they were recognizable. In some ways that made it worse.

Castiel had forgotten how big archangels truly were until Lucifer bent all the way down to where he’d left Castiel. He nudged him with what felt like the tip of a boot, but what was probably a claw.

“Hey,” he said. “Come on, give me _something_. Michael stopped talking a hundred years ago, and _you_ won’t even get up. I don’t understand. What happened to you out there?” When silence greeted him, he nudged harder. “Alright, I get it, you’re sulking about…” Castiel could only imagine that he was gesturing toward the mangled heap that now comprised him, “this. But come on, what did you expect?” He felt Lucifer fold himself down, stretching nearly to the floor—or at least, it had the appearance of the floor—to try and meet his eye. “We’d make a much better team if you worked with me here. Will it help if I let you get some payback? I'll give you three free swings, as hard as you like.”

They remained that way for a while. Finally Lucifer let out an irritated sound that rattled every mote of Castiel’s being.

“Fine,” he sighed. “Stay there. I have some business to attend to with Crowley.”

****

“Look, this is becoming absurd. At least _try_ to heal your wounds, would you?”

He felt a plucking sensation at one of his wings—he couldn’t tell which one, anymore—but couldn’t find it in him to flinch away.

“Castiel. I don’t... _do_ something.”

A feather came away. It was very painful.

“Alright, alright. Are you trying to send me a message? Taking a page out of our Father’s book, maybe? An argument from silence?”

Lucifer slid away, bristling. “You do as you want, little brother.”

  
****

Lucifer had access to his thoughts and memories, though it wasn’t as straightforward for him to reach them as it would be in a human vessel. Their frequencies ran too close together, creating dissonance, like an old television set tuned between channels. Their graces intermittently repelled and dragged towards each other.

This was irritating. It did, however, have one benefit: since Lucifer didn’t have a clear template to draw from, but rather an approximation, his performance was bound to be slightly wrong, no matter how subtle he was with it. 

Castiel wondered if they’d figured it out yet.

****

Castiel made himself all surface, as blank as possible. There were things, feelings, that he had no interest in Lucifer finding, even if he’d struggle to read them. Even if his finding them made no material difference to the outcome. And so, Lucifer could skim forever on the jagged synch pulses of whatever memories he wanted. The important ones diminished so far that they barely registered through the static.

Sometime later, he felt something touch him again, and again he didn’t bother to flinch. This time, though, the hand fell away from his wing without taking any feathers. Interesting. It moved to the back of his neck, and he felt an involuntary spike of panic, before he smoothed it away.

“Look, little one. That’s enough. Let’s let bygones be bygones, shall we? I have things I need to do, and the longer this Darkness idiocy continues, the longer I have to delay them. So here: a peace offering.”

He’d almost forgotten what unbroken grace felt like until Lucifer sent a bolt of it straight into him. He seized up at the sound of a Heaven older than his memory, Heaven-that-was, Heaven-before, ringing through him, piercing him.

“ _Oh_ ,” Lucifer said, snatching his hand away as though he’d cut himself. There was, perhaps, distress in his voice, but it was hard to tell. “Why didn’t you just ask me to kill you outright?” He felt Lucifer unfold above him. He was silent for a long time. Finally, he asked: “Do they know?”

Unbidden, a memory floated up through the noise. He tried to pull it back in, but it had already escaped him.

_Nobody cares that you’re broken._

“I see,” Lucifer said. “I see.” Castiel felt the atmosphere around them crackle with ice and lightning. “Okay. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll do it. I understand what you want. I'll give it to you.” He left.

All evidence of the beating Castiel sustained had disappeared. He could feel the foreign frequency resounding through him in echo, and he knew it would be there until he died.

So, a few weeks, tops. He could live with that.

He laughed at his own joke.

****

“They’ve figured it out, I think,” Lucifer said. “I was going to kill them anyway, but I’d been planning the Big Reveal for after we’d locked up the Darkness. Can you _imagine_? Can you _imagine_ the looks on their faces? Oh well, no time for might-have-beens, I suppose. We work with what we have, don’t we?” Lucifer nudged him again. “Surely you’ve got an opinion on that. Michael said you were famous for having opinions. Almost as famous as me, in fact.”

Another memory floated up from Castiel. This one was free of grace and smelled faintly of cardboard boxes and cold air. Lying on a stockroom floor and thinking of...thinking of...

Lucifer drew back. “What is... _Oh_. I wondered what that was. I couldn’t place it.” Lucifer paused. “You _love_ him. Do you--do you realize that?”

Castiel had always expected glee from the devil’s mouth at that revelation. This sounded more like horror.

“I think it’s time I had a chat with them.”

Castiel closed his eyes. Absurdly, he wished for a cup of Biggerson’s dark roast with eight sugars. Half a tequila distillery to wash it down. Mezcal. Mescaline.

****

“You have visitors.”

Something in Lucifer’s voice set alarm bells blaring in Castiel’s head the way nothing else in this whole experience had. He had no idea how long he’d been down here, and he had no idea how long Sam and Dean had known he wasn’t at the helm of this ship. He’d felt a surge of _something_ at some point, something that felt of Dean-and-Sam-and-anger; a familiar feeling, but it was distant and he couldn’t tell if it was aimed at him, or at Lucifer, or both of them.

Probably both of them. _That’s good_ , he’d told himself at the time. _This way, they won’t hesitate when the time comes._

“He wants to see you.”

Castiel felt a cracking sensation down the center of him. This exact hallucination had plagued him for so long, and he’d finally pushed it out, gotten himself up and back in the game, but it had all been a lie. He’d never left. He nearly called out for Meg.

Wait. No, of course he’d left. This wasn’t a hallucination, this was the corner he’d put himself in. Still. That didn’t mean that the actual devil couldn’t be drowned out the same way the simulacra was.

He sat up. He could feel Lucifer’s surprise pulse outward before he reigned it back in.

“Do you know what I find truly miraculous?” Castiel asked, looking at him for the first time.

“Um. No?”

“The structure of the honeycomb. Genius. Sublime. Who knew that a hexagonal configuration would be that efficient? Well, bees, obviously. And, uh, some wasps.”

“Do you want to talk to Dean or not, Castiel?”

“The kind of out-of-plane strength you can get with such...such minimal density. It’s...it’s astonishing really. Both compressive and shear, I mean. The strength-to-weight ratio is...well, there’s no words for it. Miraculous. Don’t you think?”

“That’s a ‘no’, then.”

Lucifer was gone.

Castiel laid back down. He closed his eyes.

****

“He says he’s bottom-lining it for you. Whatever that means.”

Castiel opened his eyes.

 


End file.
